Wonderful World
2nd Sunday before Lent – 2015 – Year B Family Service
Don’t we live in a wonderful world? Don’t we live in a beautiful place – the sea and the waves, the walk round the hill of Howth, the views over the Dublin mountains, all the different plants and birds. Have you ever stopped to look at how amazing this world is – we can be so busy rushing around we don’t even see it. The fellow who wrote our Psalm this morning probably felt a bit like that – he’s basically saying ‘Stop – just look around you, take it all in and marvel at what you see and the God who made it all.’
At the beginning of the service I gave some people a lump of play dough and asked them to make something – shall we see what they have come up with. All so different – God who made us has given us eyes, hand, fingers, to enable us to make things. Sometimes we talk of self expression in what we write, we draw or paint – in the musical instruments we play, in the songs we sing – in other words something of us, our character, our nature comes out.
I am now going to give some people a little hand mirror – I’m afraid there’s not one for everyone in the audience – maybe ladies if you have one in your handbag, just take it out. Look at your eyes, your nose – who are you like? They say I have my Dad’s face – and also my Mum’s big toe – there’s something of our parents, our grandparents in each one of us.
But the Bible says there is more to us than that – we are made in God’s image – that marks us out form the rest of God’s creation. We are part of God’s self expression. I was born a member of the Brew family – as I have grown up, I’ve learned what it is to be a member of the Brew family, what it is to be a Brew. As I have grown in my Christian faith, I have learned more and more of what it is to be a member of God’s family, what it is to be made in the image of God. At the heart of my learning what it is to be made in the image of God is the person of Jesus Christ. as we read in our second lesson
We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. In Jesus I see the person I should be, the person God intended me to be – but more than that, much more than that, I see in Jesus the height, the depth, the breadth of God’s love for me, in his life, his teaching, his death and resurrection, leading me back to him – to love and to serve him every day of my life.
Take one last look at yourself – you are a child of God, loved by God, made for his service.